Since at least the 1950s, the American left has accomplished almost nothing. The civil rights movement got somewhere, but it was independent of the left, and it had the support - at times the military support - of the US government. Leftists played the most minor of supporting roles.

During the Vietnam war, the American left self-destructed, circa 1968, into childish fantasies of self-redemption through smashing imperialism. It was the Vietnamese who got the US out of Vietnam: American political scientists even claim that the left may have prolonged the war by alienating its prospective constituencies.

Perhaps all this was the left's fault, but perhaps not. What could have been done? Maybe the silliness of the left was a symptom rather than a cause of its impotence. The pre-1950s Old Left, well-entrenched in the trade unions, well-organized, often intelligent in its strategies and tactics, was crushed, precisely because it managed to pose a bit of a threat. Since then the unions, with trivial exceptions, have been closed to the left. Without them, the left has had no leverage in the processes that really made America function.

When it came to the Vietnam war, what were leftists supposed to do? They wanted to stop the war, but how? No one found an answer, or rather, the answers were non-starters. Anything that actually made it harder for the US to fight the war - derailing troop trains? burning down draft boards? - was seriously, dangerously illegal, not a real option for the middle class nerds who formed the backbone of the left. The Weather Underground was a predictably unsuccessful, ludicrous attempt to get these weenie cadres to change their spots.

Since the 1960s, most of the silliness and snobbishness of the left has vanished: nowadays leftists tend to avoid jargon and don't carry on like a Che Guevara Mini-Me. Yet the projects and plans of the left have the smell of failure about them. Who really thinks they are going to 'build constituencies' across America? The dogged attempts at reasonable optimism which permeate such outfits as Zmag are simply embarrassing.

The massive demonstrations which preceded the invasion of Iraq, while promising a new day for leftism, turned out to deepen the feeling of hopelessness: how could so strong a surge of protest have melted away into the usual deadening electronic swirl of sterile 'critique'? Even Fahrenheit 9-11, the phenomenon that was supposed to have people springing up to debate the war in little movie theatres across the country, became as big a political dud as it was a commercial success.

A fabulously expensive and pointless war that is going badly, to no one's benefit, with weak popular support, virtually without even ostensible justification, does pretty well on the home front. Leftist 'actions' against that war attract less attention than the umpteenth Survivor clone. As for Bush's approval ratings, these can plummet without having the slightest effect on the war effort.

Worst of all, the very concept of political action has been attenuated to the vanishing point. By now, many leftists have only the faintest idea of what it is to do something. They see two options, non-violent protest and violent protest, never suspecting that both of these are closer to speech than to action. 'Support' has come to mean equally little: like protest, it has to do with uttering words. On rare occasions, this gets kicked up a notch! - words are uttered, or displayed on signs, while marching down the street. For those right on the edge, there might be a fight with the cops. Why? Because that expresses the extreme anger of the protesters. Even fighting has become little more than a mode of expression, not a type of action. Because no one really expects the audience to be very impressed, there is a kind of brittle hopelessness to these exercises in futility. Yet some people, at least, find solace in their confusion: the essentially verbal exercises of protest, support, research, critique, education, these are all taken for action. That relieves a bit of the stress accompanying the underlying, half-acknowledged realization of powerlessness.

My concern with this history is that it may lead the left to overlook an unprecedented opportunity. After Vietnam, the US government opted for an all-volunteer army. The very impotence of the left may have been an unconscious factor in the decision, if only because it would never have occurred to the armed forces that leftists could actually mess with this system. But they can, if only their long stint of impotence doesn't prevent them from seeing how much power they have in their hands.

Of course, leftists are quite aware of the recruitment crisis in today's armed forces. But awareness isn't enough - excitement would be more appropriate. This is not just a weakness in the system which sustains the war effort. It is a fatal weakness.

Recruitment is essential: no troops, no war. Recruitment happens, and has to happen, all over the country. All over the country, right where they live, people can do much to make recruitment less effective. Parents of high school kids (and veterans' groups) are already working on this. Every high school, every university, every place where recruiters go, is an ideal battleground, because the anti-war forces, far more than the recruiters, are on home ground.

Recruiters are vulnerable to student protest, to one-on-one confrontations, to anti-war parents and to all those adults who can support them. Anti-recruiters, who make the case against joining up to potential recruits, can circulate on the ground; others can use online services to reach fighting age computer users. Posters can go up all over cities and towns across the country, perhaps with pictures of some of the wounded Bush likes to hide.

Unfortunately the left has, so far, shown little awareness of these opportunities. A contingent on the September 24th Washington march is going to offer the same old 'support' for anti-recruitment efforts. This means, I guess, they will march down the street holding signs and chanting chants.

Here is the same old confusion of talk and action. The left should not just 'support' the parents' efforts. The left should be making those same efforts. Here is a chance, at last, to really make a difference - why isn't the left taking it?

I see two obstacles. The first is that the left, at the moment, works out of very broad-based organizations. A.N.S.W.E.R., for instance, lists a 'Steering Committee' consistng of the following:

and, naturally, this leads to a scattergun program. The one 'action' A.N.S.W.E.R. is pushing at the moment is its September 24th march on Washington, a march not to perform achieve any result but to express some opinions. About what? Its list of demands goes like this:

Stop the War in IraqEnd Colonial Occupation from Iraq to Palestine to HaitiSupport the Palestinian People’s Right of ReturnStop the Threats Against Venezuela, Cuba, Iran & North KoreaU.S. out of the PhilippinesBring all the troops home nowStop the Racist, anti-Immigrant and anti-Labor Offensive at Home,Defend Civil Rights

These are all great ideas, but that's all they are - ideas. No one believes the marchers will get any of these things, and we have again this meaningless 'support' for a goal that would need some very large armies to actually implement - the Palestinian right of return. This is defeatism masquerading as ambition, the embracing of what is hopeless because it has never occurred to the organizers that they could actually make a change, and soon, in the world. The way to do this is to focus, focus on recruitment: if the left puts all its energy into this and nothing else, it can score its first genuine victory in several decades.

There is a catch, though: anti-recruitment efforts can't have much success unless the left changes its current message which, again oriented more towards protest than political action, is moralistic to the point of irrelevance. Recruiters are most successful, of course, in the 'red' states, and among patriotic (or 'patriotic') Americans - people who are for America as it is today, not for some left-wing ideal of what America ought to be. These people are not going to burst into tears when they hear that the war is terribly wrong - if they were open to such appeals, the US wouldn't have gone into Iraq to start with.

Given its current message, the left has no plausible way to address these patriots: in fact the left's message gives them reason to support the war effort. If the war is being fought for oil, for example, so much the better: America needs oil. If the war benefits some rich clique, well good: it probably benefits big business (and most leftists agree), so it means jobs and prosperity - any discussion of these motives will at best fritter away into an unresolvable dispute about trickle-down economics. And if the US went into Iraq to establish permanent, powerful military bases, well great - that will help secure oil supplies and enhance US security. (Here too, the left bolsters this argument by going on about how the Iraq invasion will help the US dominate the whole region.) That Bush may have told some lies or falsehoods to obtain these results doesn't seem such an enormity if, as the right correctly says, you have America's interests at heart. Just one point the left makes - that invading Iraq doesn't help 'fight terror' - is politically useful, and that's not enough.

Fortunately, there is a truthful message that does address American patriots, because much of what the left says is false. Whatever the activities of rich lobbyists and whatever its morality, the war is not in US interests. By this I don't mean simply that the war is not in the interests of working people, or the poor, or middle class people, or the 'boys' who fight there. The war is also not in the interests of US imperialism, or big oil, or big business. That the left opposes these forces shouldn't blind it to the necessity of pointing this out, because otherwise anti-recruitment efforts won't be successful enough to have real impact on the war effort.

It doesn't take much to see that the war is not 'in US interests' in this red-state sense. For one thing, big oil and big business have never been supporters of the war. Bush I, who was much closer to big oil than Bush II, never wanted to invade Iraq. For all the left's addiction to 'research', the names of big oil companies (or, for that matter, big auto executives, or retailers, or manufacturers) and their executives have never surfaced in analyses of who pushed for war. It's not that oil companies don't seek to influence policy, or that Bush is not responsive to their concerns: witness Exxon's involvement in the shaping of US reaction to Kyoto. It's rather that invading Iraq offers no net economic benefits.

It is said that the US wants oil, and wants to control its sources. True. But, in the first place, the way to control oil is not to piss off virtually every oil producing country in the world, which is what the invasion of Iraq did.

Second, the US doesn't normally need to occupy anywhere at all to secure oil supplies: it has many other, cheaper and more effective means at its disposal, including all forms of economic pressure, and limited military actions such as blockades, embargoes, or even air strikes.

Third, if you have to control oil by force, you take oil fields: it is simply idiotic to take on the extra burden of subduing the whole country. In fact, occupying the whole country, as the invasion of Iraq makes clear, is a terrible way to secure oil supplies, because it incites people to attack their own pipelines and other oil installations.

Fourth, if there is one thing that big oil companies (as opposed to small-time cowboy outfits like Unocal) want, it's long-term political stability in oil-rich regions. This isn't achieved by bringing war to the area. Typical of big-oil tactics is not warfare, but almost infinite patience, and tolerance of oil-rich régimes. That's why big oil has consistently reacted to Saudi Arabia's repeated demands for greater control of its oil, not with intimidation or military pressure, but with tolerance and compromise. This does not necessarily mean that oil companies aren't evil; it just means they aren't stupid.

As for the rest of really big business, it has great interest in arms buildups but no great interest in war. Boeing and Lockheed and Rockwell and the other really large defense companies can get big government contracts whether or not there is war. The US invasion of Iraq had done nothing for their stock price or their profits, because the really big contracts they get have to do with the development of advanced fighters, submarines, missiles, and other equipment that would be overkill in the Iraq adventure. As for long-term US defense interests, the whole direction of US defence strategy, with its emphasis on aircraft carriers, ship and submarine-launched cruise missiles, in-flight refueling, and rapid transport of heavy equipment, makes having bases in Iraq only a convenience, not a necessity or even a serious advantage. If bases were really needed in the region, it would have been far cheaper to bribe the Gulf States - lavishly - into keeping a discreet American presence.

Why then did the US go into Iraq? To my mind it was because the US had to show the world that it was powerful after the humiliation of 9-11, and especially after the equally great humiliation of failing to capture or kill Bin Laden and the Mullah Omar. But it really doesn't matter why the US went in: if the government thought it was in US interests, the government was wrong. It wouldn't have been the first time.

There has been more than enough on why the US invaded, who had what motives, who said what when, who lied, who's sinister, who lobbies for what, who studied with Leo Strauss, and all the rest of it. This is all so much distraction from the only important thing - getting out.

If the left is to play a real role in this - and not, as during the Vietnam war, merely provide a sideshow while the Vietnamese did all the work - it has to hit recruitment. Just this, and nothing else. Otherwise, even if the US does get out of Iraq, the left will have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

---

Michael Neumann is a professor of philosophy at Trent University in Ontario, Canada. Professor Neumann's views are not to be taken as those of his university. His book What's Left: Radical Politics and the Radical Psyche has just been republished by Broadview Press. He contributed the essay, "What is Anti-Semitism", to CounterPunch's book, The Politics of Anti-Semitism. In September 2005, CounterPunch/AK Press will publish Neumann's new book, The Case Against Israel.

ROME - An Italian judge ordered the arrests of 13 people in the purported CIA abduction of an imam, who then was sent to Egypt, the Milan prosecutor's office said Friday. An Italian official said earlier the 13 were CIA officers involved in U.S. anti-terrorism efforts.

The 13 are suspected of seizing Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, on the streets of Milan on Feb. 17, 2003, and sending him to Egypt, where he reportedly was tortured, Milan prosecutor Manlio Claudio Minale said in a statement.

The U.S. Embassy in Rome and the CIA in Washington declined to comment.

The prosecutor's statement did not name any of the suspects or mention the CIA by name, but an Italian official familiar with the investigation confirmed newspaper reports Friday that the suspects were working for the CIA.

Minale said the suspects remained at large, and Italian authorities would ask the United States and Egypt for assistance in the case.

Prosecutors believe the officers seized Omar as part of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program, in which terror suspects are transferred to third countries without court approval, according to reports Friday in newspapers Corriere della Sera and Il Giorno.

so, it seems we have to do this the hard way. gum up the system, as has been done and shall be done again. tactics however, tactics...

there are a few soft spots around the way, a few processes that conservative people in conservative times need observed before they render any judgments.

that's just the way it is.

not necessarily "will be"...

but is.

a recurring theme this...

and sometimes...

sometimes...

(...)

you definitely get more mileage out of having half-baked laws than having laws that make sense. i mean, laws that makes sense would act like a good referee: out of sight and out of the game until a penalty call is obviously needed. that ideal makes perfect sense, and for a good game.

however, if those referees get to call arbitrary penalties on select players despite no obvious fouls committed against any other player... well, sure that screws up the game, but it definitely reinforces who's in charge and who tacitly or actively endorses that.

i mean, no one can tell you what to eat, drink, smoke, have sex with, etc...

except...

except...

"da gub'mint! i tell's ya it's da gub'mint!"

so, when they have laws that make no sense, it really reinforces who's in charge here no matter what hypocrisy they brandish.

(ahh, brandish, i missed you. how long's it been?)

i mean, let's take the harmless out of harm's way already and just get some boring-ass definitive process going that's indubitable.

so, with verve and clicquot i present a slo-pitch pitch once attempted with the sincerest of underhand tosses. i hadn't finished tinkering to finesse the press corpse before the collective thought balloon was whisked away into the flotsam and jetstream of the disinformation highway...

i mean, my dear boy...

it's downright crudimentary...

they float it out there...

the people sleep...

they sneak it by the twin lions of pride and reason who pad silenty beside everyone...

and slowly put the plan in place with the damage control man on stand-by...

However, every time I see stories of a massive grow-op shut down and millions more yet to be found, I also see an opportunity to better understand one of the simplest laws of capitalism: supply and demand.

To wit: WHY are there so many grow-ops?

Quite clearly, the answer is Canadians want to smoke marijuana. It's really that simple. What is less discussed in the frenzy of sensational drug-busts: should they?

Before knee-jerk reactions, we've got to look at first-principles: the reason to make drugs illegal is their harmful and addictive quality. This forces an unnatural reaction from the supply and demand chain that can lead to criminal activity: we're all scared of drug addicts robbing old ladies to feed their habit.

Even then, we've legalized tobacco, alchohol, painkillers, and a variety of addictive substances proven harmful that contribute to the deaths of thousands. So the hypocrisy is classic, but unfortunately, it is hasn’t been proven that it is hyprocrisy.

Yet.

This doesn’t mean we should legalize or decriminalize marijuana, it's merely a natural reaction to the fact that Canadians clearly want to smoke it, and how we should treat their interests as a matter of private morality. We've respected this concept since Pierre Trudeau famously said "the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation", and fundamental to the Canadian identity is creating a safe space for an infinite variety of opinions and actions. Without knowing exactly why, it is fundamentally un-Canadian to restrict the actions any citizens unless proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is harming them or society as a whole.

So, perhaps we should call on one of our classic blue-ribbon commissions to study this matter in-depth, and show exactly why we should react to the desire of many Canadians to smoke marijuana by increasing penalties across the board. Despite years of enforcing existing laws the number of grow-ops is still growing, and profit-motives cannot be underscored without recognizing that Canadians are spending their hard-earned money on this "habit" or "pastime" or "addiction"...

Which one is it?

Our reactions are overreactions until we find out for sure, and with millions of dollars spent on increased prosecution, perhaps sparing a few dollars to see if this is a good idea isn't such a bad idea. In the end all Canadians will be affected by this, from those that want to grow or smoke marijuana, to those paying millions of tax-dollars to stop them, to the increased costs of incarceration, to the increased danger we face from the convicted felons we create.

Caveats already exist: Medical marijuana is available by prescription, while the grey area of how to acquire it causes terminally ill patients undue stress – so we should settle this soon for those in pain with little time left on this earth. Kids shouldn't smoke marijuana – nor should they smoke cigarettes, drink alchohol, or abuse painkillers, so reviewing similar restrictions is natural. Stealing electricity is wrong, and we need to stop it. And of course, our relationship as a marijuana supplier to the United States, which is more of a border-control issue than one to dictate how we handle the situation domestically. While we figure out if we should let millions of Canadians continue to smoke marijuana, we can continue to work with the United States on respecting their laws of their country and restricting supply.

As Canada moves into the 21st Century, we have to ensure that we truly have nothing to fear but fear itself. With all the hysteria around grow-ops and the scourge of marijuana, we should settle this issue with a few facts before committing to costly solutions.

- Black Krishna

(...)

Epilogue:

Remember kids, many of the people who tell you that marijuana is evil are the same people who tell you things that do this are good...

Monday, June 20, 2005

Civil War Games - Part Deux: "We've got to stay long enough to train the Iraqi people to defend themselves..."

games....

(...)

i got a rock.

i throw it at a cat.

the rock flies.

the cat goes splat.

i got a gun.

i aim it at iraq.

bullets fly.

iraq goes splat.

i got two fish.

i throw them in a bowl.

they're two fighting fish.

one fish is the goal...

(...)

"We create, Monsters we hate, We debate, 'Til, Sitcoms at eight,

We can't relate, To that much hate, We should hesitate, 60 to 1 was too late...

We create, Monsters we hate, We debate, 'Til, Sitcoms at eight,

We can't relate, To that much hate, We should hesitate, 3 million was too late..." - Black Krishna, "We Create", It's Your Revolution: Take, Break, and then Make The Rules

(...)

"I never knew in the course of all those operations any detainee to live through his interrogation. They all died. There was never any reasonable establishment of the fact that any one of those individuals was, in fact, cooperating with the VC, but they all died and the majority were either tortured to death or things like thrown out of helicopters."..."It [Phoenix] became a sterile depersonalized murder program... Equal to Nazi atrocities, the horrors of "Phoenix" must be studied to be believed."-Former "Phoenix" officer Bart Osborne, testifying before Congress in 1971

Operations

The Phoenix Program was an attempt to isolate and target specific individuals within the VCI network using Human Intelligence (HUMINT) sources. One US Army method for targeting this Viet Cong infrastructure was the cordon and search method in which troops surrounded a village suspected of Viet Cong activity, and interrogated and evacuated its population. Some Phoenix operations were also military in nature, such as when ambushing an armed Viet Cong assassination squad at night between villages.

Provincial Interrogation Centers (PIC) were set up in each of the 44 South Vietnam provinces. Most of the counter-infrastructure experts were in the Provincial Reconnaissance Units, called “PRUs.” Along with North Vietnamese defectors and South Vietnamese, they also included Cambodian and Chinese Nung mercenaries. These units of about 118 men each were recruited, trained and paid by the CIA, with the help of Navy SEALS and Green Beret special forces.

Administrators of the program instituted quotas to be met by provincial offices, in an attempt to increase participation and effectiveness of the Phung Hoang program. In late 1969, the quota was 1800 per province.

(...)

Measures of success and failure

It was a program which resulted in both a refugee problem and greater discontent among the population. The Phoenix program was dangerous, for it was being used against political opponents of the regime, whether they were Viet Cong or not. Phoenix also contributed substantially to corruption. Some local officials demanded payoffs with threats of arrests under the Phoenix program, or released genuine Viet Cong for cash. Some military experts surmised that Phoenix was helping the Viet Cong more than hurting it. By throwing people in prison who were often only low-level operatives — sometimes people forced to cooperate with the VCI when they lived in Viet Cong territory — the government was alienating a large slice of the population.

The Phoenix Program has also been branded as an "assassination campaign" and has received much criticism as an example of human rights atrocities committed by the CIA and the organizations it supports. Indeed, faulty intelligence often led to the murder of innocent civilians, in contravention to the Geneva Conventions. American statistics showed 19,534 members of the Viet Cong “neutralized” during 1969 — 6,187 killed, 8,515 captured, and 4,832 defected to the South Vietnamese side. South Vietnamese government figures were much higher. However, fewer than 10% of the casualties attributed to Phoenix operations were actually targeted by program operatives, with most of the remaining casualties being assigned VCI status after they were killed. Efforts by provincial chiefs to meet quotas also led to manipulation of statistics by counting non-VCI arrests, arresting the same person multiple times, and attributing military casualties to the Phoenix program. It was widely recognized that statistical record keeping during the first few years of Phoenix program operations was subject to distortion, embellishment and was very inaccurate.

Due to ineffective intelligence and minimal commitment, the Phoenix Program was ultimately a failure; its lesson is in the difficulties of dealing with an insurgent population during wartime.

SOURCE - http://www.answers.com/topic/phoenix-program

(...)

"Look at your young men fighting,Look at your women crying,Look at your young men dying,The way they've always done before...

Look at the hate we're breeding,Look at the fear we're feeding,Look at the lives we're leading,The way we've always done before...

My hands are tied,The billions shift from side to side,And the wars go on with brainwashed pride,For the love of God and our human rights,And all these things are swept aside,By bloody hands time can't deny,And are washed away by your genocide,And history hides the lies of our civil wars..."- Axl Rose, "Civil War", Guns'n'Roses

(...)

June 20th, 2005 3:49 pm

Iraqi Security Tactics Evoke the Hussein [Vietnam] Era

By Jeffrey Fleishman and Asmaa Waguih / Los Angeles Times

BAGHDAD — The public war on the Iraqi insurgency has led to an atmosphere of hidden brutalities, including abuse and torture, carried out against detainees by the nation's special security forces, according to defense lawyers, international organizations and Iraq's Ministry of Human Rights.

Up to 60% of the estimated 12,000 detainees in the country's prisons and military compounds face intimidation, beatings or torture that leads to broken bones and sometimes death, said Saad Sultan, head of a board overseeing the treatment of prisoners at the Human Rights Ministry. He added that police and security forces attached to the Interior Ministry are responsible for most abuses.

(...)

The ordeal described by Hussam Guheithi is similar to many cases. When Iraqi national guardsmen raided his home last month, the 35-year-old Sunni Muslim imam said they lashed him with cables, broke his nose and promised to soak their uniforms with his blood. He was blindfolded and driven to a military base, where he was interrogated and beaten until the soldiers were satisfied that he wasn't an extremist.

At the end of nine days, Guheithi said, the guardsmen told him, "You have to bear with us. You know the situation now. We're trying to find terrorists."

SOURCE - http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3064

(...)

Robert Baer has worked for the CIA’s Directorate of Operations for more than two decades and spent most of his career in the Middle East. An Arabic speaker, he was considered one of the best on-the-ground field officers in the Middle East. He has also published a book about his time within the CIA. The memoirs are entitled See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War Against Terrorism.

BARRY: Does the CIA engage in these techniques?

ROBERT: The CIA didn’t up until 9/11. Yes, things have changed but keep in mind that I don’t work for the CIA anymore. As I understand it, there’s a lot of franchising stuff out. Syria is a country, like Iraq, where they torture people. They use electrodes, water torture. They take torture to the point of death, like the Egyptians. The way you get around involving Americans in torture, is to get someone else to do it.

The Blueprint - Volume 1: Seeds - PART EIGHT: Everything is a Function of Time, and Feeling Bad is a Waste of Time...

what time is it?

what time you got?

(...)

what time is it now?

what time you got?

(...)

what time is it now?

what time you got?

(...)

"There are bad actions, and worse reactions; it often isn't the actions of man that are the problem, but the reactions of man." - Black Krishna

(...)

9/11.

Can you even look at the clock the same?

9:11.

Can you even look at the world the same?

9-11.

Can you even look at the world of shame?

(...)

"3000 lives, That died by fire, But if you can't figure why, You're a goddamned liar..." - Black Krishna, "How Do We Stop The Next Columbine?", Confessions Of An Aging B-Boy

(...)

"It infuriates me because 30,000 children die in Africa every day because they have no food. If this was happening on a different continent we wouldn't dream of leaving it for a few days, but because it's happening in Africa, apparently it's alright."- Sir Bob Gelhof

loc'd up, lift-quick, step outside, brown-pride, so i ride, with pride, on my hide, same-side, side-walk, walk-talk-on-the-block, chalk-up emo'souls, sold-out, in shock, goal'd out, so i walk, told 'bout, so i stalk, mould doubt, so i block, the cock-blockin'-jock, eyes-size the prize, lies of silence'n'violence, 'proach me in silence, violence ain't my reliance, gotta get shook, open-book, no doubt, hold clout,bring'em out, when in doubt, grill-out, flared-snout, but i dared-doubt, the code, of street-meetin' heat, can't be beat, if i never see defeat at my feet, defeatin' the beaten steppin' like they reppin' too hard, retards in leotards, 'proach like they always on guard,

got a minit for ya, state ya claim or insane, got a minit for ya, the game blamin' shame, got a minit for ya, the fame claim is lame, got a minit for ya, then i'm runnin' my own game...

(...)

so...

what time you got?

how you gonna spend it?

(...)

The Blueprint - Volume 1: Seeds - PART EIGHT: Everything is a Function of Time, and Feeling Bad is a Waste of Time...

"If it makes you happy, It can't be that bad, If it makes you happy, Then why the hell are you so sad..." - Sheryl Crow, "If It Makes You Happy"

(...)

"The revolution will not rip the X-Box out of your hands." - Black Krishna

(...)

so...

what time you got?

how you gonna spend it?

(...)

"Well, I woke up this morning, and got, myself, a beer..."- Jim Morrison, "Roadhouse Blues", The Doors

"And Jehovah blessed the latter days of Job more than the earlier days. And to him were fourteen thousand sheep and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she-asses."- The Holy Bible, The Book of Job, Chapter 42

(...)

damn son...

sounds like Jay-hova is down with BET...

damn son...

(...)

I was having a discussion with a couple of black activists a while back, a male and female, and they both said what they hate most was the "fake smiles of white people." Not all white people, but the ones giving them "fake" smiles, generally in passing.

The guy said when he sees that, he gives them the worst "screwface" look he can. The girl said she does this too, and that when she gets a dirty look she gives them a big-ass smile just to piss them off more.

I said they were wrong.

1) Don't let anyone get you shook: never let anyone ruin ya good mood even for a minit, it's a waste of YOUR minit, not theirs - they chose to start shit.

2) Don't let a moment in passing get worse: you don't know what they really feel, so don't take it personally unless you have hard evidence of malice.

3) Don't forget what everyone needs to overcome: fear. Dude's a 6'4" dreadlocked "big-black-guy", and little white people may be flippin' "half-smiles" out of uncertainty and unfamiliarity. Chill 'em out, and maybe the next smile they flip a "big-black-guy" or girl will be naturally wider.

Besides, according to my Dad we're coming up on Kaliyuga, or the Hindu end of 5000 years worth of shit. That's right, all this crap going on right now, mass-starvation, political corruption, disease and the next few years of hell on earth are the culmination of some cosmic jump-off in 3000 B.C., so we're all screwed anyway.

That's right.

We're all screwed anyway.

(...)

Characteristics of Kali Yuga

There are many passages in the Hindu writings, which describe the condition of the World during Kali Yuga - an actual era in which suffering plays an important part in spiritual liberation. Amazingly these facts, are exactly what we are seeing in the World today. Among the most striking of these passages from the Hindu holy books are the following:

Swami Vivekananda, a great Indian mystic wrote:

"But greater than the present deep dismal night...no pall of darkness had ever before enveloped this holy land of ours. And compared with the depth of this fall, all previous falls appear like little hoof-marks."

Obviously this seer is refering to our actual era, Kali Yuga.

"Cheating will be the order of the day in business relations; satisfaction of sexual pleasure will be the only consideration of male or female excellence and worthiness."

"Celibates, will cease to observe their vows of study, purity and celibacy; householders will take to begging (instead of giving alms); hermits will resort to villages (leaving their retreats in the forests); and sanyasins will be extremely greedy for money."

"In the Kali Yuga, men will abandon their parents, brothers, friends, and relatives. They will occupy high seats (and pulpits) and will (pretend to) preach religion."

The Bush administration worked behind the scenes to weaken key language in the Group of 8 proposal for joint action on climate change. The Washington Post reported on Friday that administration officials successfully pressed negotiators to drop sections of the report that warned of more frequent droughts and floods and commited a specific dollar amount to promoting carbon sequestration in developing countries.

This follows major revelations published in the New York Times earlier this month that a White House official repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that played down links between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. The official -Philip Cooney- was chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality which shapes much of America”s environmental policy. Before coming to the White House in 2001, Cooney was a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute.

Just two days after that article was published, Cooney resigned from the council and ExxonMobil announced they were hiring him. A recent investigation by Mother Jones magazine found that ExxonMobil has spent at least eight million dollars funding a network of groups to challenge the existence of global warming.

ExxonMobile defended its hiring of Cooney by stating that they hire from both sides of the aisle. In a written statement to Democracy Now! The company wrote that “ExxonMobil hired Mr. Cooney at about the same time we hired Matt Gobush, who was the Communications Director for Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman. We have always hired highly qualified people for their talent--not their politics.”

SOURCE - http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/20/1328225

(...)

science is understanding the world.

science is under corporate control.

science is understanding choices.

science is under the radar.

science is understanding.

science is under attack.

science is underground.

science is understood.

science is science...

...for now.

(...)

"It's good to be the King."- Mel Brooks, "History of the World: Part I"

(...)

"Who's world is it, The world is yours, The world is--The world is mine, is mine..."- Nas, "The World is Yours", Illmatic